Peter DeBaugh

PS 5155 – Political Behavior

Dr. Ondercin
December 9, 2021

Affective Party Polarization on Twitter and Offline

Introduction

Twitter is the main culprit for people expressing more extreme views because individuals

only read, follow, and support others who have the same views. Twitter is the prime example of

this where people choose to follow the accounts they want and only expose themselves to

information that conforms to their partisan perceptual view of the world. Millennials have

grown up at the same time Twitter and social media flourished and they understand how to better

use social media than older generations. Millennials’ socialization on Twitter and behavior on

Twitter may cause them to become more affectively polarized than older generations both online

and offline which leads to the research question: Are millennials becoming more affectively

polarized both on Twitter and offline than their older counterparts because of social media and

because they grew up in the age of social media?

Literature Review

To study affective polarization in social media, affective polarization must be understood

and defined. Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra, and Westwood (2019) define affective

polarization as, “ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other

party.” They are careful to point out that affective polarization has nothing to do with policies or

issues, but a general dislike of the other side, or the out-group. The focus on group affiliation

and feeling is what is important to build on for the study of affective polarization on Twitter and

offline. Iyengar et al.’s definition shifts the focus away from issues and policy towards group

feeling and how individuals think of their group versus other groups. Törnberg, Andersson,
Lindgren, and Banisch (2021) builds on the idea of sorting into homogenous groups online,

“New media technologies allow us to self-segregate to avoid the discomfort of having our views

challenged.” The key to these arguments is the concept of being able to self-sort into similar

groups online with people who share views. This study will also use the concept of self-sorting

along with socialization through social media to highlight the possible higher rates of affective

polarization in millennials.

We see evidence of reducing shared ground with those who have different opinions

online in yet another study, “Affective polarization is negatively related to involvement in cross-

cutting discussions, suggesting that individuals extend their dislikes to the opposing political

party to out-party members within their online social networks” (Heatherly, Lu, and Lee, 2016).

This is showing that people who are affectively polarized do not participate in discussions with

members of the other party. They go on to posit, “we expect some individuals to be motivated to

filter out dissonant voices and gravitate towards views that resonate with their own

beliefs…eschewing cross-cutting discussions in favor of like-minded ones” (Heatherly et al.,

2016). More and more people are forgoing cross-cutting debates online because they only want

to be exposed to congruent information about their preferred political party and social media is

the best place to do that because of the ability to choose who to follow and which news to see.

Political socialization is important for understanding the behavior of millennials on

Twitter. Social settings are important for political preference formation “social settings exert an

independent influence over preference formation – one that is even larger than the influence of

partisan ambivalence… we cannot fully explore how citizens apply their partisanship in

evaluating political information without also accounting for the social settings in which

individuals find themselves” (Klar, 2014). The internet is a new form of social setting, and we
should treat it as such when discussing political socialization as well as affective polarization. It

is also important to note that Klar goes on in her article to distinguish the difference between

heterogeneous social groups and homogeneous social groups and the effects they have on

socialization and the outcomes of partisan motivated reasoning. Understanding homogeneous

group dynamics is important for understanding how homogeneous groups on social media sites

such as Twitter act. Klar posits, “partisans interactive in like-minded groups subsequently

engage in directional motivated reasoning. They become more likely to prefer their own party’s

policy and rate the opponent’s policy as more ineffective as a result of the like-minded social

setting” (Klar, 2014). Of course, she is referencing offline social settings as being in person, but

social media is the largest social setting we have in our culture today and her theory can be

carried to online spaces.

Törnberg et al. discuss affective polarization in social media sites and finds homogenous

groups forming online. Their work builds and connects with both of Garimella’s pieces where

they discuss Twitter users being exposed to opinions that only agree with their own, as well as

the idea that people want to seem less bipartisan, so they sort themselves into distinctly partisan

groups online. Their argument here is that “we receive social feedback that leads us to either

strengthen our weaken our expressed identity” and “new media technology shifts our interaction

from being primarily local to being less constrained by space, which gives us more freedom to

come together with others who are similar to us” (Törnberg et al. 2021). They are arguing that

social media is driving more polarization because people receive more feedback because we can

interact with more people online than we can in the real world and that strengthens or weakens

affective partisan positions. “This reduces our shared ground with those who differ from us,

resulting in that the interactions that do take place become more conflictual” (Törnberg et al.,
2021). This even further illustrates that homogeneous groups in social, online, settings result in

strengthening partisanship and making it harder to find common ground.

Millennials who have grown up and have been socialized on social media sites may have

a stronger affect toward their chosen political party based on the conscious choice of who to

follow and what homogeneous groups to be a part of in online settings. Iyengar et al. also

acknowledge, “increasingly homogenous online and offline interpersonal networks may be

contributing to affective polarization” (Iyengar et al., 2019). They make sure to note that

partisans become more “isolated” and choose to move towards echo chambers online which may

increase affective polarization online. Echo chambers are reinforced by a concept called partisan

sharing.

An, Quercia, and Crowcroft (2014) present partisan sharing, “the tendency for users to

predominantly share like-minded news articles and avoid conflicting ones.” This is somewhat

like partisan motivated reasoning but is almost a precursor for online interactions because

someone has to share articles or information before someone else actively seeks it out. An et al.

find that partisan sharing not only exists, but that it is also “associated with people who are

knowledgeable about politics and are actively engaged in political life” (An et al., 2014), two

things that are usually indicative of stronger partisanship which can lead to affective polarization.

Echo chambers themselves can be big drivers of affective polarization. Garimella et al.

discuss the idea of echo chambers online, they define echo chambers as, “situations where one is

exposed to opinions that agree with their own” and they go on to find, “that Twitter users are, to

a large degree, exposed to political opinions that agree with their own” (Garimella et al., 2018).

Just like Klar, Garimella et al. understand that people respond in a more partisan manner if they

are exposed to only the information they agree with. But Garimella et al. take it a step further in
addressing the aspect of online content and only seeking congruent information and like-minded

people in the online social setting.

Social media in general has become such a big part of daily life and consuming political

news. Most people get their information from online sources. “A recent Pew survey found that

more than 60% of Americans get their news from social media” (Garimella and Weber, 2017).

The fact that people are so in connected with social media and receive so much information

makes a social media site like Twitter a perfect social setting for polarization. Garimella and

Weber also find that, “polarization on Twitter has increased over the past eight years, potentially

reflecting increases in offline polarization… the increase of polarization was found to be

between 10% and 20%” (Garimella and Weber, 2017). Understanding longitudinal effects is

important for measuring polarization online. The reason the Garimella and Weber study is

important for understanding polarization is because it is “one of very few with such long-term

perspective, encompassing two US presidential elections and two mid-term elections.” This

shows that the polarization they find is not just temporary spikes but is building steadily over

time. Another reason this is very important not only because Garimella and Weber find evidence

of increased polarization online, but because they have found it in the last eight years which is a

good indicator of the fact that millennials may be driving that increase. This study will push past

their initial findings to understand the polarization online of different age cohorts.

Most recently we have seen affective polarization on social media due to the Coronavirus

pandemic. Lang, Erikson, and Schmitt (2021) discovered in their study political polarization

online through the expression of support or avoidance of mask-wearing. They found that the

echo chamber effect was alive and well in the “pro-mask group, which ignored the subversive

rhetoric of the anti-mask minority” and “the sharp rhetorical polarization was accompanied by
asymmetrical participation dominated by pro-mask majority that was segregated into an “echo

chamber…”” This helps to further lay the basis for the echo chamber theory that will be a central

key in the study of millennials’ affective polarization on social media and provides a current

real-world example of echo chamber polarization. They also conclude, “our results demonstrate

that the digital discourse on Twitter about mask wearing was rhetorically polarized whereby the

rallying calls of the mask supporters, and the battle cries of the mask resistors resonated with

other mask resistors but were drowned out and ignored by a vocal and overwhelming pro-mask

majority” (Lang et al., 2021). Again, this describes why affective polarization is happening

online: people only want to hear and see what they choose to see. Social media, specifically

Twitter here, is the ultimate echo chamber which is causing them to express more negative views

both online and offline. Even when individuals do see dissonant information, they try to drown

it out, or totally ignore it and fight even harder for their views. Even beyond these findings, their

research suggests that people wanted to be antagonistic and create irritation on both sides.

Affective polarization was about liking their own view just as much as vehemently opposing the

opposite view during the pandemic online. The behavior that Lang et al. found on Twitter is the

driver behind my theory of millennials becoming more affectively polarized online and offline

due to their better command and understanding of social media.

Individuals choose to consume the content that agrees with their viewpoints, and they

will also strongly defend the stances they hold close. Social media is the ultimate echo chamber

where people choose who to follow and choose what news to see and believe. Each piece of

literature here builds from the ideas of political socialization, affective political polarization, and

polarization online to lay the groundwork for this study into how social media has led millennials
to become more polarized than age groups before them. The behavior of millennials on Twitter

causes them to be more affectively polarized both online and offline.

Theory Section

Are millennials becoming more affectively polarized both on Twitter and offline than

their older counterparts because of social media and because they grew up in the age of social

media? That is, do millennials have stronger positive views of their own political party along

with stronger negative views of the opposing party both on Twitter and offline? The goal here is

to examine behavior on Twitter and understand if the affective polarization among millennials on

Twitter is spreading to offline feelings towards the in-party and out-party. There are several

hypotheses that accompany this question:

H1: Millennials hold stronger positive views of their political party on Twitter than older
age groups.

H2: Millennials hold stronger negative views of the opposing political on Twitter than
older age groups.

H3: Millennials have stronger positive feelings towards their political party offline than
older age groups because of the discourse on Twitter.

H4: Millennials have stronger negative feelings towards the opposing political party
offline than older age groups because of the discourse on Twitter.

For the hypotheses the independent variable is age, and there are several dependent

variables. The dependent variable in H1 is positive views of the in-party political party on

Twitter. The dependent variable for H2 is negative feeling of the out-party on Twitter. The

dependent variable for H3 is positive feeling toward the in-party offline. The dependent variable

for H4 is negative feeling of the out-party offline. The scope of the study encompasses

millennials in the United States and an older age cohort for comparison. The main population of
interest though are millennials, to find if they are more affectively polarized online and offline,

than older age groups.

We can observe the phenomenon of affective polarization because of social media on

Twitter. Affective polarization can be operationalized through keyword and key-phrase

searches. The more a person is tweeting, commenting, or liking and/or retweeting particularly

overt partisan content that is very positive, trusting and complimentary of the in-party along with

tweeting, commenting, or liking and/or retweeting particularly overt partisan content that is

negative or distrustful of the opposing political party, the higher the level of affective

polarization an individual has. Behavior on Twitter is the driver of my theory and seeing that

millennials are using stronger language both positive about their own party and negative about

the opposing party is why I expect to find higher levels of affective polarization compared to

older age groups both on Twitter and offline.

Understanding that millennials were socialized to use the internet at the same time as they

were being politically socialized is why I expect the internet to affectively polarize millennials.

The behavior that millennials learn on social media sites is the main reason I expect to see

stronger feelings towards the in and out-party. Because social media can be a big echo chamber

for one’s own views the expectation is that the internet socializes young generations along

affective partisan lines, and older generations were not exposed to the same level of affective

partisan discourse when they were being politically socialized. This will affect behavior on sites

such as Twitter and cause millennials to express stronger positive feelings of the in-party and

stronger negative feelings of the out-party. The causal mechanism here starts with a young

person being politically socialized along with socialization on the internet, which distorts their

views on the political parties due to echo chambers and filtering incongruent/dissonant
information, and then due to the abundance of choice and avoidance that the internet allows only

receiving information from like-minded co-partisans and thus distrusting out-partisans. Once the

individual is eighteen, they are more affectively polarized than older age groups because of

social media combining with political socialization. And thus, we should see in the behavior

online and offline, a more affectively polarized age cohort.

Some mediating factors to this expectation might be the potential that people may stay

away from political news online. With so many choices of who or what to follow and the choice

between news and entertainment people may avoid politics online altogether. Most people may

just go to the internet as an escape and as a way to avoid the realities of our already polarized

political system rather than to engage more deeply.

The findings I expect in H3 and H4 are a little less clear. The idea that millennials are

more affectively polarized offline because of Twitter is harder to directly observe. There are so

many ways that people can become affectively polarized and certainly social media sites play a

large role, but it is less likely that feelings of dislike and distrust online translate into offline

situations. People are bolder online and are more willing to make bigger claims and speak more

strongly when they have a screen to hide behind. In the real-world people do not talk like they

do on social media sites.

Another reason affective polarization may be harder to find offline is because a large

segment of the population hides their partisanship. They may certainly feel dislike and distrust

towards the rival political party, but in many cases, an individual may not even claim one party

or the other and may just identify as an Independent. I expect to find inconclusive results

relating to the second hypothesis of millennials are more affectively polarized offline due to the

nature of discourse on social media sites.

 Understanding if millennials are more affectively polarized online because of their

socialization and use of social media begins with understanding that they were politically

socialized along with learning about the internet and social media. I expect to see a higher level

of affective polarization among millennials on Twitter because of their socialization process and

the difference between growing up with the internet and growing up without the internet.

However, seeing offline affective polarization levels at the same rate as online is very unlikely

because even if individuals are still affectively polarized, they may not express it offline as

quickly as they do online because of the ability to be partially anonymous.

Conclusion

Millennials may be more affectively polarized on Twitter when compared to older age

groups because of their knowledge and grasp of social media, growing up as social media

flourished. Their behavior on Twitter may also lead them to become more affectively polarized

offline as well. Twitter should act as an echo chamber where individual’s behavior of expressing

strong feelings both positive for their own party and negative for the opposing party will be

echoed and circulated without resistance from others in their groups. This behavior should lead

to higher rates of affective polarization both online and offline.

This theory of Twitter causing higher rates of affective polarization both online and

offline fits into existing literature by understanding what online behavior means for both online

and offline feelings towards the in-party and out-party of individuals. This theory also touches

on socialization of millennials during the rise of social media which has been studied very little

and is a burgeoning topic in the political world now that young adults just beginning to vote have

had the internet for their whole lives. The implication of the theory that affective polarization is
rising both on Twitter and offline could mean more extreme views coming from the two political

parties to appease a growing size of more polarized voters.

References:

An, Jisun, Daniele Quercia, and Jon Crowcroft. 2014. “Partisan Sharing.” Proceedings of the
second edition of the ACM conference on Online social networks - COSN '14: 13–23. doi:
10.1145/2660460.2660469.

Garimella, Kiran, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Aristides Gionis, and Michael

Mathioudakis. 2018. “Political Discourse on Social Media.” Proceedings of the 2018
World Wide Web Conference on World Wide Web - WWW '18.

Garimella, Venkata Rama Kiran, and Ingmar Weber. 2017. “A Long-Term Analysis of
Polarization on Twitter.” Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Heatherly, Kyle A, Yanqin Lu, and Jae Kook Lee. 2016. “Filtering out the Other Side? Cross-
Cutting and like-Minded Discussions on Social Networking Sites.” New Media & Society
19(8): 1271–89.

Iyengar, Shanto et al. 2019. “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the
United States.” Annual Review of Political Science 22(1): 129–46.

Klar, Samara. 2014. “Partisanship in a Social Setting.” American Journal of Political Science.

Lang J, Erickson WW, Jing-Schmidt Z, 2021. “#MaskOn! #MaskOff! Digital Polarization of

Mask-Wearing in the United States during the COVID-19 Pandemic” PLOS ONE 16(4).

Törnberg, Petter, Claes Andersson, Kristian Lindgren, and Sven Banisch. 2021. “Modeling the
Emergence of Affective Polarization in the Social Media Society.” PLOS ONE 16(10).